"I find Guy Delisle's graphic novels fascinating. In Jerusalem for a year while his wife works for MSF, Guy wanders around Jerusalem, sketches, and tries to understand this bizarre world. There is a lot of gentle humour in his work, and he is great at capturing the utter strangeness of some of the situations he finds himself in. "

"A window on what arguably is the most complex political situation in the world, explained through snippets of a foreigner's daily life. It was great to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and inter-religious relations in the Holy Land through a different medium."

"God this book is painstaking. (Read: painful.) It's good, it's thorough, and I read all five hundred pages or whatever. But the writing style induces anguish. It's so full of qualifications like: "But this correlation doesn't imply causality" or "Even when we hold race, class, gender, education, and imcome constant..."

I'll save you hours of your life and give you the summary: Throughout the twentieth century, more and more Americans were participating in clubs, having dinner parties, going to church, volunteering, working on political campaigns--until the 1970s. Then, this steady increase in partipation became a sharp drop, and civic life continues to decline.

Various things could have caused the decline: women entering the work force, racial integration, the internet, longer commutes, busier work schedules. Really, though, the evidence points to two main things that caused this decline: television and generational differences (the baby boomers were less likely to volunteer, Gen X even moreso, and so on).

This is a shame, because people who are involved in civic life (even something as small as playing cards or hosting dinner parties) are more likely to vote, to volunteer, to have friends, to create safe neighborhoods, to make more money, etc, etc.

This book might just finally get my ass in gear to do the volunteering I've been talking about."